Moving the burden, not relieving it
I just finished Gordon Tullock's Public Goods, Redistribution and Rent Seeking. I stumbled across it in the local Community College library and was surprised they would have something like that. I have to say that although it was an easy read, I was not impressed at all. It looks as if nobody edited it, as it was filled with inappropriate commas, words dropped, and extra words added.
As far as the contents go, the first third used "externality" in such a way as to stretch the definition beyond anything useful or even recognizable. The last third mostly goes over the ground covered in The Calculus of Consent, which he co-wrote with James Buchanan (a fact which he reiterates about six times). I therefore only found one chapter, in which he argues that charity and altruism have a biological basis, to be educational.
However, there was a table elsewhere in the book which contained something I had not previously known: during the Depression, the federal government merely took over the payment of unemployment pay from local counties, but did not significantly increase it. This information is derived from research done by Stanley Liebergott (the citation is for American Economy: Income, Wealth and Want, 1976).
I suppose this resonated with me all the more because I am about 1/3 of the way through Kirkpatrick Sale's Human Scale, where he is making the argument that the nature of government is to increase its own size with little in the way of a balancing benefit to the populace.
As I recall, Mutual Aid societies, as discussed in David Beito's From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967, paid out much more to those who purchased private unemployment insurance. The difference is not that the government aid is free and the Mutual Aid insurance is not, but that the latter is more transparent and has better (more effective and economical) controls against abuse. Private insurance also carried no stigma, since everyone understood that you were only getting back that for which you had already paid rather than getting a free ride on "someone else's dime" (which is in fact not true since presumably anyone laid off was already paying taxes). And, in Sale's language, mutual aid is on a more human scale because most society members knew one-another.
As far as the contents go, the first third used "externality" in such a way as to stretch the definition beyond anything useful or even recognizable. The last third mostly goes over the ground covered in The Calculus of Consent, which he co-wrote with James Buchanan (a fact which he reiterates about six times). I therefore only found one chapter, in which he argues that charity and altruism have a biological basis, to be educational.
However, there was a table elsewhere in the book which contained something I had not previously known: during the Depression, the federal government merely took over the payment of unemployment pay from local counties, but did not significantly increase it. This information is derived from research done by Stanley Liebergott (the citation is for American Economy: Income, Wealth and Want, 1976).
| Year | % of earnings of common labor |
| 1850 | 22 |
| 1860 | 26 |
| 1870 | 24 |
| 1903 | 23 |
| 1929 | 31 |
| 1940 | 28 |
| 1950 | 29 |
| 1960 | 28 |
| 1970 | 29 |
I suppose this resonated with me all the more because I am about 1/3 of the way through Kirkpatrick Sale's Human Scale, where he is making the argument that the nature of government is to increase its own size with little in the way of a balancing benefit to the populace.
As I recall, Mutual Aid societies, as discussed in David Beito's From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967, paid out much more to those who purchased private unemployment insurance. The difference is not that the government aid is free and the Mutual Aid insurance is not, but that the latter is more transparent and has better (more effective and economical) controls against abuse. Private insurance also carried no stigma, since everyone understood that you were only getting back that for which you had already paid rather than getting a free ride on "someone else's dime" (which is in fact not true since presumably anyone laid off was already paying taxes). And, in Sale's language, mutual aid is on a more human scale because most society members knew one-another.
Labels: book, decentralization
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